Synopsis
This is the touching story of a provincial French girl (Sandra Julien)
who, after an accidental fall down an elevator shaft, discovers that she
is (gasp!)a nymphomaniac. She loses her fiancé, gets fired from her
job, is kicked out of the house by her parents, and has to leave her
small town for big, bad Paris where she falls under the spell of an
older predatory pair of libertines (Janine Reynaud and Michael Lemoine).
Review
It’s hard to know what to make of this movie. With the crappy English
dubbing it seems a lot like those ridiculous 16 mm. black-and-white
Harry Novak-type sexploitation movies they were making in America in the
1960’s and 1970’s. However, visually the film is very well-made and it
features sumptuous European actresses like Jean Rollin’s regular Julien
and Jess Franco regular Reynaud (rather than the pimply anonymous Times
Square skanks that were in the American sexploitation movies of the
era). Perhaps it is a more serious and classy production than the
atrocious English soundtrack would leave you to believe.
In any case, I don’t think this movie was exactly meant to be a serious
exploration of nymphomania so much as an excuse for a lot of nudity and
softcore sex by the aforementioned Julien and Reynaud. Nothing wrong
with that though. The girls in these type of movies have always been
male fantasy figures, but these ridiculous pre-feminist European fantasy
figures of days gone by are definitely more interesting than the
equally ridiculous but much more jaded, post-feminist fantasy figures of
today. I’d like to see this in French with English subtitles, but it’s
worth watching regardless.
In France director Max Pecas is known as ‘the King of Crap’ (to which he
responds ‘at least I’m King!’), but I wouldn’t go that far. ‘Nympho’ is
a highly enjoyable romp, of the cheesy grade z nature. Although made
back in 1970, the film often has the feel of a fifties french jazz-cafe
flick (dig that groovy soundtrack!) with some dirty fun for good
measure. Pecas direction is solid enough, with a nice use of lighting
throughout.”
